Win $1000 Of Steam Cash! $200 For Every Day This Week

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Has the Steam Summer sale cleaned you out? Are there still games that you’re itching to purchase while they’re cheap? Or perhaps there’s a game that remains stubbornly at full price but to which you’ve pinned your dreams. In any case, an extra $200 in your Steam wallet probably wouldn’t go amiss. That’s what we’re giving away each day this week in partnership with Bundle Stars.

It’s enough to pre-order yourself a Steam Controller, Link box, and still have change for games. The money is provided by Bundle Stars, an online store currently offering the All Stars 2 Bundle. It contains nine Steam games for £2.39 including Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl and Mount & Blade.

How to enter:

There’s a widget below with an array of methods for entering the competition; you can use one or more, depending on how many chances to win you’d like. You gain 2 entries for visiting the RPS Facebook group, 2 entries for signing up to the Bundle Stars email, 2 entries for joining the Bundle Stars Steam group, 2 entries for following @rockpapershot on Twitter and 1 entry for tweeting about the giveaway. You can also gain additional entries for referring friends to enter the giveaway through Facebook and Twitter sharing.

Your entries are good for every day of the competition – so enter one way on Monday, and another on Tuesday, and both of those entries will still have a chance of being drawn as winners come Friday.

Following a Twitter account or Steam group requires accounts for each of those services, though visiting the Facebook pages does not.

How the winners are selected:

Winners are selected randomly from all entries each day at 4pm BST. Winners will be contacted with their prize as soon as possible after the draw, and we’ll update this post each day with news of who won.

The competition will end this Saturday 20th June when the last winner is chosen.

You have to enter your email address and name (into the widget) so that it can contact you if you win, but no, you don’t need to Like or comment on anything. Just press the button within the widget to visit the Facebook page.

Where do you see this? You don’t need to connect or anything. I just follow RPS account, there is no new application of any kind in my Twitter anywhere. Or in Facebook. Or in Steam. And I already have account in BS, ‘cause good bundles are good. Stop panicking, there are real issues and problems in the world.

You don’t see a difference between making an account on “public media” like RPS, a site that doesn’t require us to provide real names, physical addresses, and doesn’t demand a credit card or phone number just to make an account, and “social media” like Facebook and Twitter which do ask me for all of those things (repeatedly when I deny them the first time.)?

Really? So because you entrust your personal information to a website run by a douchebag that described anyone that trusted his company in its early stages as ‘dumb fucks’ you think the rest of us are comfortable sharing our lives with him?

You can enter the competition (twice) by giving it your name and email address (so you can be contacted if you win) and by clicking a /link/ to a Facebook page. No need to Like the page or, as far as I can tell from here, to have a Facebook account. That seems pretty minimally intrusive? No need to do the other things – following on Twitter or sharing the competition – unless you want more entries over and above that.

I’ve made like seven twitter accounts, and they’ve never asked for my credit card or anything of the sort. They do send far too many emails, and when you start the people they recommend you follow are utterly ghastly, but that’s a separate issue.

@Fersken; you don’t have to sign up to Plebbook and become botnet, “only” visit the page through the referral link in the widget. Whether or not you want to take that risk, given that FB is known to track even non-members across the internet (through like-button and other trackers) and use it to send you “friendly invitations” is up to you.

I am very disappointed that RPS ends up resorting to this kind of shameless stunt for its advertising.

What is the next move? A nice Android app which tracks your location to sell it to advertisers? The glorious right to install a spyware when you subscribe? Or what about some nice old-school porn pop-ups?

Really? Because I’m all for this kind of shameless stunt. If RPS wanted to do a joint thingy with Bundle Stars and they were subtle about it how would that be better? Anything that could be construed as a conflict of interest ought to be brash and anything that’s going to harness your social media whatsits ought to be very clear about it (and pay you for it). This hits all those notes. Also RPS clearly needs to have some income. If the subscriptions and the sidebar ads aren’t covering the costs of the writers they need to do other stuff or sack people and it would be irresponsible to do the latter before attempting the former.

Blogging about video games isn’t making enough money? Well I have a solution for you! Get into the business of selling your users personal information. But we don’t ask for our users personal information, you might say. Well that doesn’t have to stop you! Just run a promotion and make your users link their accounts to other sites that do ask for that information and BAM! You now have a cheap, easy source of personal bits to sell to other companies. It really is that easy.

If I become an RPS supporter, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while now that I’m working again, will it make it less likely that you’ll have to do shit like this?

To put it another way, do you have the same kind of problem with this kind of promotion that I do, and are just doing it because subscription money isn’t covering costs, or are you happy about it, and would do it anyway for the extra cash?

In case the tone doesn’t get across, I’m not massively worked up about this or anything. I’m just curious as to whether my failure to pay you for your work has led to this thing that I find kind of annoying.

We’re not making any money off this. The only money involved is the $1000 that Bundle Stars put up as the cash prize. There is obviously promotion involved for Bundle Stars, in that it gets their name out there, and there is obvious promotion involved for RPS, since it gets our Facebook and Twitter groups out there.

It doesn’t flash or make noises on the main page. It is clearly marked and labelled as what it is. It requires some personal details to enter, but it doesn’t do anything without first asking your permission. It is optional to enter and the only benefit to doing so is the chance to win the prize, so it’s not interfering with our other content.

I can kind of understand a de facto discomfort with anything that is dual purpose – ie. it’s a competition, but it also has those promotional aspects I mention above – but is there something specific that bothers you about it?

I don’t know whether we’ll do this kind of thing in future or how often, but feedback is useful. And thanks for supporting!

You’re completely right. It’s not awful, or particularly exploitative, or bad. I agree you’ve done everything you can to make it reasonably low key and looking at it more carefully I was wrong to say that I have a problem with it as a promotion, and my own explanation of my tone aside, way too critical of it.

Honestly, and I fully recognise how trivial this sounds, but I think, looking very carefully at what annoyed me about it, it’s the title. “Win $1000 Of Steam Cash! $200 For Every Day This Week”.

It’s written like spam. It’s like every other irritating pop up, email that gets through the filter and wakes me up, or idiot comment bot that wants me to stay home and earn $$$ on the internet. This is going to make me sound like the arse that I am, but the word ‘vulgar’ keeps popping into my head.

Anyway, I was wrong, but the explanation for my initial knee-jerk, is the tone of the title. Too many dollar signs, one too many exclamation marks and too many numerical digits per letter of text. It triggers something deep inside me.

I think it’s one of those “sullied by association” things. Like browser toolbars. In theory there’s nothing wrong with them, and indeed you could have a perfectly benign or even great one. But they’ve been so utterly ruined by scammers and other obnoxious sorts that they’ll forever be tainted.

What I don’t like about ‘competitions’ like this: It’s not a free chance at a competition, it’s just a marketing trick to increase an audience. It looks like a competition where I can win something, but in fact it’s a deal where I have to give my data and awareness, and I also have to endorse RPS/Bundlestars to get something. Most people don’t mind that, but for me it’s a shady attempt to add me to your audience and/or get my personal data (in the worst case to sell it later). Perhaps it just marketing, but to me it’s questionable.

Aside from the plain vulgarity of encouraging your esteemed readers’ basest instincts (greed), giveaways are completely unnecessary, remind me of similar acts by less savoury media, hand out wealth to a random lucky few, put you my trusted PC blog into bed with the kind of big money that seem to think it’s in its own interest to hand out some small money to the slavering masses and, worst of all, forces me to look at all involved parties for ulterior motives.

There is also those of us who don’t have and don’t want an account on a social media site.

I’ve already signed up here on RPS, and also on Bundlestars. Then why do I have to sign in/up to unrelated parties? There’s only one reason; personal data about its users. You may not care, but Bundlestars sure do (and whoever they sell that info to).

Only if I where guaranteed the money would I unblock Facebook and make an (false) account.

I don’t have any issue with these sort of promotions. You’re not forcing anybody to do anything. If we’d like to enter the competition, we can. There are several ways of doing so, all increasing the audience/exposure for RPS or Bundle Stars, in return we’re given a chance to win something pretty cool. Not a bad price to pay, especially as we can pick and choose how far we’re willing to let RPS/Bundle Stars get into our (mostly) social networks.

I feel you’ve done this in exactly the right way, you’ve been upfront and honest, there are no attempts to trick or deceive. I personally think the bad reaction is coming from the fact that SO many of these sorts of promotions are deceptive in some way, that we’ve just come to expect it whenever we see something like this.

This is all above board and every single person can make their own choice whether to enter or not, there’s no being forced into anything at all.

I agree with you. In my personal opinion the contest was about as well done and honest as these things can be, though I would imagine the positive impact for RPS will be small as it is almost entirely a Bundlestars competition regardless of what anyone says,

I entered, but I didn’t do either the Facebook thing, the Twitter thing of the recommend a friend thing. I’m glad those were optional as I no longer use Facebook and am unwilling to give anyone access to my Twitter account. So I ended up with 40% of an entry, so my chances of winning are basically none. But hey,it didn’t cost me anything, barely even any time.

As partners go Bundlestars are fine – I’ve used them for a while for buying games and had no issues at all though TMMV.

What primarily rubs me the wrong way about these types of campaigns is that the way they’re adverts disguised as social media interactions (such as the tweet).

It seems pretty clear to me that the primary purpose in buying tweets / likes / etc as opposed to just paying for regular advertising space is to get around the scrutiny one normally has when knowingly watching an advert, and that seems inherently dishonest to me.

eh, I appreciate the chance to win a little something relevant to my interests via one of my favourite sites. I can see why some people don’t like it but it’s not the first time RPS have partnered in something like this. There was the RPS Humble Bundle in fairly recent memory too. Anyway, I entered and fingers crossed

Hey just some feedback for this promotion. Think this is better format to give multiple options in order to get a chance. I think the last Bundlestars promotion was more restrictive. It’s good to put the winners is on this page too.

I understand these promotions can get people’s back up for a variety of reasons which is fair enough but I think this format is an improvement (multiple options to enter).